We’re Pottenger’s Cats…

We’re Pottenger’s Cats and we don’t even know it.

Over a period of 10 years (1932-1942), Dr. Frances Pottenger worked with over 900 cats, providing them with different levels of raw foods in their diets. To grossly summarize the experiment, the cats were divided into three groups: (Group 1) fed raw milk and raw meat, (Group 2) fed raw milk and cooked meat, and (Group 3) fed cooked milk and cooked meat. With every run of the experiment, Dr. Pottenger had to stop after the third generation because the Group 3 cats (all cooked food) were incapable of reproduction. The third generation of Group 3 had massive infant mortality, physical defects, anti social behavior and many chronic and degenerative diseases. The third generation of Group 2 had the signs of chronic disease as well as other problems, but they were still mostly capable of reproducing. The third generation of Group 1 showed no signs of disease or social maladaptation.

Since World War II, the Standard American Diet emerged, and those who ate it placed themselves into the human equivalent Group 2 or 3 of Pottenger’s cats (the average American eats 10-20% raw food and the healthy American eats about 40% raw food). Three generations have come and gone, eating food that was purchased already processed with lots of sugar, salt, preservatives, flavors and colorings (that’s after being grown with pesticides and herbicides or raised with hormones and antibiotics) and look at where we are. We’re still capable of reproduction (for many with difficulty), we’re not experiencing 100% infant mortality, but are suffering from all of the multiple chronic maladies (mind, body and spirit) that inflicted the third generation of Groups 2 and 3. We’re Pottenger’s cats and we didn’t even know it. We are now experiencing diseases that were unheard of 50 – 70 years ago (ADD, ADHD, Fibromyalgia, Autism, Chronic Fatigue…), and they’re showing up in our children earlier and earlier.

Thanks to Dr. Pottenger’s research the slogan of “we are what we eat” is wholly inadequate, it should be “our children will be what we ate.”

Please note that I took liberties in summarizing Dr. Pottenger’s experiments – please do your research on his experiments to get all of the details.